Abstract:

Problem statement:
For many decades school children in Azerbaijan were facing the same problem –being unaware of the job market and specifics of certain professions they couldn’t make the right choice of very important part of one’s life, choice of profession. We were guided by our parents’ experience, followed our idols from TV or friends from the yard. We selected future professions just because of prestige of a university or workplace.

In Azerbaijan it is very common that people choose professions because of subjects well-mastered at school. As the result we are lacking professional human resources, have big number of expensive workers-expats and thousands of dissatisfied citizens willing to get any job. According to the statistics of the last year, we have 251,7 thousand economically active people in Azerbaijan. Our job market is overloaded with translators, economists and teachers who don’t pursue their specialty after graduating a university. Only 4% of working people are concentrated in the Human Health and Social Activities –the field which is very important for every nation.

Significant results:
Seeing and living this problem we decided to work out a method of analyzing every school student’s interests, personal characteristics and skills which will help to identify their inclinations and make better decision in future career. For school children in Azerbaijan we have worked out a prof-orientator test in partnership with Lomonosov State University, which is supplemented by consultations on recent trends in job market and the universities which provide the education selected by the student.

It has been 2 years that we implemented the prof-orientator test in our center and results are sometimes incredible. We have already guided 370 students into carriers perfectly matching to them and got very high satisfaction level with results of the test (94%).

These findings may be of interest or useful for any educational institute or event government bodies which face the common problem.

Keywords:

Professional orientation, skills, interests, personal analysis, educational system in CIS countries, university education, job market, Azerbaijan.